


Stupid Cupid

by agoldenblackbird (mass_hipgnosis)



Series: sooner or later it comes down to fate [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis Friendship, F/M, Gen, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 17:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13686369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/agoldenblackbird
Summary: Darcy would be much more into office holiday parties if her co-workers weren't invited.





	Stupid Cupid

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing my tradition of not participating in EAD because in my little corner of the interwebs, [every day is EAD.](https://agoldenblackbird.tumblr.com/post/157249464023/happy-valentines-day-have-some-fic) Instead, have some stuff that's finished! Confetti!

Darcy gritted her teeth and smiled and nodded as Jackbooted Thug #2, whose real name was something testosterone-driven and snappy with hard consonants, Buck or Brick or something, touched her elbow for the third time in five minutes as he invaded her personal space. 

Darcy took another sip of her agressively pink cocktail, just managing not to stab herself in the eye with the glittery red plastic cocktail sword holding three soggy, heart-shaped strawberry slices, and used the movement to shift her elbow out of his grasp – what was even with the elbow thing, did he have a fetish? – and step back a bit. JT2 continued with his humblebragging about all the dangerous missions he'd been on, a conversation that was mostly directed to her chest, while Darcy looked around the room frantically for an escape. 

Office holiday parties were an actual lower circle of hell, she was pretty sure. There had been rumours that SHIELD holiday parties were actually thrown by the Advanced Interrogations Team from PsyOps, as a method of culling the weak before they made it to field agent status and got someone killed/searching for new talent among the sadists in the secretarial pool. As her eyes moved from the heart-shaped sugar cookies that were covered in pink icing that was hard enough to chip a tooth, to the pink and red heart-shaped balloons, to the papier-mache cupid pinata, to the pink and red and white glitter that was scattered 'artistically' on every flat surface and that Darcy knew she'd be picking out of her bra later despite having kept a three-foot distance from the piles of craft-herpes at all times....well, she really really believed that rumor. 

Even though attendance was mandatory, she'd only come because of Jane. But Jane had been distracted by FitzSimmons and had probably snuck off to the lab levels for Science!, leaving Darcy without a human shield or any convenient excuse to escape. 

Just then, Darcy spotted Agent iPod Thief coming in the door. They'd never actually spoken, but she knew who he was; everyone in the building did. And despite a barrage of increasingly irritated emails and voicemails, and once she'd been hired, inter-office memos, he'd never given her iPod back, dammit. 

So she turned a bright shiny go-fuck-yourself smile on JT2, shoved her drink in his hand when it looked like he was gonna try to touch her again, and said, “Thanks for keeping me company, Brick-” 

“Brock,” he interrupted with a frown. 

“Right. But my boyfriend's here. Excuse me.” And she strode right up to one Phillip J. Coulson, said quietly, “Consider this payback for never returning my iPod,” and kissed him. “Congratulations,” she said against his mouth, then pulled back enough to see his eyes, hoping to have surprised him at least a _little,_ but he was still maintaining the bland composure he'd managed even in the face of aliens falling from the sky. “You're now my fake boyfriend and shield against knuckle-draggers like Jackbooted Thug #2 over there.” 

One side of his mouth quirked up the tiniest bit in something that could almost be a smile, and then he dipped her like that sailor in the V-J day photo and kissed her breathless. 

When he set her back on her – very unsteady – feet, he asked, “What would you say about upgrading that to soulmate?” 

Darcy blinked at him stupidly for long seconds. “What.” Because those were her Words, inscribed in flawless Palmer script down the back of her right thigh. 

“I've been holding your iPod hostage for over a year, I was starting to run out of patience.” 

_“What.”_

“More importantly, _Natasha_ was starting to run out of patience. When the Black Widow decides you're taking too long, people tend to bleed.” 

“People like you? Because I might be okay with that. Seriously, do you know what it was like to spend the summer in a town with _one_ radio station that wasn't country or right-wing talk radio?” There was Bieber. She and Jane had sworn a solemn pact never to speak of it again. 

“I gather from your tone that it was less than ideal,” Coulson said blandly, but there was a hint of a smirk there for someone looking closely, and Darcy definitely was. 

“Ugh, you're a troll! You probably _started_ that rumour going around, that you're actually a robot designed by Howard Stark.” 

“Not the one that I apprehended three AIM agents with an apple?” 

_“I_ started that one,” Darcy replied with a smirk of her own. “I liked the alliterative quality of it.” 

“The Latverian spy and the gummi worm?” 

“That was Clint.” 

“Of course it was. You two being friends doesn't bode well for my blood pressure.” 

“If you think my friendship with Clint is the worst thing that can happen to your blood pressure...” Darcy said with an eyebrow-waggle and suggestive leer. 

“If I say yes, you'll just take it as a challenge, won't you?” he asked, sounding long-suffering. The smirk pulling at his mouth and the index finger tracing circles and curliques on the nape of her neck said he didn't really mind, though. 

Darcy cooed at him. “Aww, see, we _are_ soulmates! You know me so well already!” 

“Want to get out of here?” he asked, proving her point. “Every nice restaurant in the city is booked solid, but I know a diner that does great cheeseburgers.” 

At the mention of food, her stomach sent up a polite reminder that her last 'meal' was a blueberry Pop-Tart while mediating one of Stark and Jane's pigtail-pulling matches, before sending them to opposite corners like kindergartners in time-out. “Please. Before I decide to risk those heart-shaped deviled eggs.” 

“I wouldn't recommend them; Psy Ops is testing a new truth serum.” 

“I KNEW IT! Wait, can I dare Clint to eat one of them before we go?” 

“Only if I can take video.” 

**Author's Note:**

> me: What a sweet review! I think I'll reply to it.
> 
> social anxiety: ORRRRR
> 
> me: hoe don't do it
> 
> social anxiety: ORRRR we could be an awkward turtle and overthink our response for TWO MONTHS and then not reply at all because it's been too long and we made it weird! And then stress out about how we didn't reply and it made us look rude and ungrateful!
> 
> me: ugh why are you like this
> 
> social anxiety: AHAHAHA
> 
> I am trying to be better about responding to ALL messages, from internet-folk and IRL peeps...it's actually my NY's resolution for 2018. But. It's very much a work in progress. So if you get a response in your inbox to a review you left a month ago, that's why.


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